The Other Daughter

by Lauren Willig

  “That won’t be necessary.” Lady Olivia spoke in her soft, slightly husky voice. “I shouldn’t want to put you out.”

  Was there a subtle dig in that?

  “No trouble,” said Rachel, with a smile that felt as though it had been painted on. She swept a corner of her shawl over her head, adopting a mystic voice. “Nothing is hidden from the all-knowing eye of Madame Zelda! In these cards, I hold the secrets of the future—and the past.”

  Cece was lit like a Roman candle, fizzing with excitement. “See?” she said triumphantly, swaying a little on her heels. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Lady Olivia looked at Cece and didn’t seem to like what she saw. Putting a hand on John’s arm, she murmured, “We really ought to go.…”

  “Oh, come,” said John indulgently, giving her hand a perfunctory pat. “We came all this way, don’t you want to see what Madame Zelda will reveal?”

  He smiled, showing that he thought it all a great joke.

  Lady Olivia attempted to mimic the smile, but she looked … uneasy. Rachel’s eyes flicked from one to the other. To Cece, exultant with anticipation; John, determinedly amused; and Olivia, who looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  And then there was Simon.

  He slid a casual arm around Cece’s shoulders. “You do know that it’s all rubbish, don’t you?” The words were light, but Rachel sensed something genuine beneath them. “The cards are only bits of paper.”

  “Don’t be such a bore.” Cece shrugged off Simon’s arm, tugging at Rachel’s hand. “There’s a table over there. Let’s sit, shall we?”

  In the end, Rachel and Olivia sat. The others stood around them.

  The table had been draped in red velvet, a crystal ball in the middle. John, Simon, and Cece all wavered in the glass, a series of carnival images, distorted and unnerving. Rachel ignored the ball and concentrated on the cards.

  Rachel fanned the deck in front of Olivia. “I need you to draw seven cards. They must,” she added in her best Madame Zelda voice, “be chosen with your own hand.”

  Lady Olivia’s hand hesitated over the deck.

  “Choose wisely,” said Simon sarcastically.

  Cece swatted him on the arm. “Hush. You’ll destroy the vibrations.”

  “It will be what it will be,” said Rachel soothingly. Particularly since she would be assigning the meaning. The silk fringe fell in her face. She brushed it back again. “Have you made your choice, Lady Olivia?”

  The other woman started to reach toward the cards, and Rachel raised a hand to stop her.

  “No gloves. Your bare fingers must touch the cards.”

  “For the psychic powers to be transmitted?” said Simon.

  “Yes,” said Rachel firmly.

  There was an awkward silence as Lady Olivia tugged at the engagement ring that was lodged so snugly over the kid of her gloves.

  “Do get on with it,” said Cece impatiently.

  Lady Olivia didn’t grab at the cards, or take them all in a clump. Delicately, she drew the cards at intervals, picking each one as though it were a flower.

  Her pale lashes flickered up, revealing those gray eyes that were so familiar and yet so different. Tentatively, she offered the cards to Rachel. “Here.”

  “Mmm,” said Rachel, and wondered just what it was that Lady Olivia was so afraid she might see. The old scandal about her elopement with Simon? Or something more recent, more damning? She tapped the cards together into a little pile, then set the first one down, faceup. “Four … a change in your life. And not just a four, but the four of hearts. Marriage?”

  Olivia glanced up at John, just the smallest movement, before looking down again, at her bare hands.

  Rachel turned another card. “The eight of diamonds. There are festivities in your future, a celebration of some kind.”

  “A wedding?” suggested Simon, in dulcet tones.

  “Or Jicksy’s twenty-first,” said Cece, leaning so far over Rachel’s shoulder that she was practically nose-first into the crystal ball.

  “You forgot the journey over water and the dark-haired man,” said John, with a smile at Rachel.

  “Madame Zelda needs quiet to work. All doubters and skeptics to the back of the line.” Rachel turned another card.

  She meant it jokingly, but there was no doubting that there was something charged in the atmosphere. In the background, the violins wailed a lament. Somewhere behind them, a glass shattered. With the press of bodies, the room was stiflingly close, the roar of voices muting to a blur. The entire room seemed to have narrowed to the glimmering surface of the crystal ball, the brightly painted figures on the cards.

  Rachel frowned at the card in her hand. She was, she realized, just a little bit drunk. Not drunk like Cece, but enough to be just a little dizzy.

  “What is it?” demanded Cece.

  “Seven. The seven of spades.” If ever she had been tempted to believe in the cards—which she hadn’t—it would be now. This one was straight out of the pamphlet she had studied. And it couldn’t describe their father more accurately. “There is an unfaithful or dishonest person in your life. I see broken promises.”

  Simon raised a brow. “Trevannion?”

  In the crystal ball, Rachel could see John’s lips tighten. “Not all politicians are dishonest, Montfort.” He looked down at Olivia’s bowed head. “And not all of us break our promises.”

  Olivia pushed back from the table. “Is that the time? I wouldn’t want—”

  Hastily, Rachel slapped down another card from the four left in her hand. “Secrets,” she said loudly. “I see secrets.”

  According to her pamphlets, the jack of clubs was really a well-meaning but immature young man. But it was time to move this along.

  Another card. The joker.

  Fresh starts and new opportunities, according to the pamphlet.

  That would never do.

  Raising both hands, Rachel intoned, “A voice from the past is calling out to you, someone forgotten, someone wronged.” Her bangles clanked and jangled on her wrists in the sudden silence. “A voice from the past is crying to be heard.”

  She raised her eyes to Lady Olivia’s pale face.

  But it wasn’t Olivia who spoke. It was Cece, her voice high-pitched and excited. “Whose? Whose voice?”

  SIXTEEN

  “Whose voice?” Cece’s long nails were like talons, digging into Rachel’s arm, her voice high and shrill. “Whose?”

  Simon slung a casual arm around Cece’s shoulders. “You’re tight, my dear. Don’t you know better than to drink from someone else’s flask?”

  His pose was relaxed, but Rachel could see the pressure he was exerting to draw Cece away. Something, something was happening, and Rachel had no idea what. All that was sure was the cheap cardboard of the cards beneath her fingertips.

  “Go to the devil.” Cece pulled her arm away, stumbling into the small table with such force that the crystal ball—best Woolworth—rocked on its base. “Tell me. Tell me what you see.”

  “It’s just a game.” Simon’s voice was harder now. “Isn’t it, Vera?”

  “Of course,” said Rachel. She swept up the cards, shuffling them together. “It’s all nonsense, really.”

  Cece grabbed the edge of the table, her knuckles white beneath her rings. “But what about Jean-Luc? And Leonie? And that horse … coming back to the stable.…”

  “Leonie? Oh.” With horror, Rachel recognized her own fictions. “But, darling—all chance. And that was France. Things work differently there.”

  Cece grabbed Rachel’s arm, clinging with the tenacity of the extremely drunk. “Do it again. Do it for me.”

  The cards fell and scattered. The joker winked at Rachel from the top of the pack.

  “The forces grow weak.…” said Rachel in her best Madame Zelda voice. Only it wasn’t a joke anymore. The urgency in Cece’s face was both pathetic and terrifying. She made a lurch at normalcy. “The spirits need more gin. Won’t you come with me to t
he bar, darling?”

  “It’s Simon, isn’t it?” The black kohl stood out in stark lines around Cece’s eyes, her rouge was too red on her pale cheeks. “He’s got to you.” She gave a vaguely hysterical laugh. “He won’t even say his name. Will you, Simon? All I have to do is say—”

  Simon’s voice was sharped, clipped. “I think we’ve had enough fortune-telling, don’t you?”

  Cece grabbed at the flowing folds of his white shirt. “Don’t you want to know? Or are you afraid of what he might say?” Her voice was rising, higher and higher, audible even over the rusty scraping of the motley minstrels. “You don’t listen. You never listen. If you had listened, he might have—”

  “Cece.” Tentatively, Lady Olivia reached out a hand.

  Cece knocked it away. “Don’t you Cece me!” Her mouth was a scarlet O; the words rushed out like lava, tinged with flame. “What do you know about any of it? You don’t care; you never cared. If you hadn’t been so busy exchanging sweet nothings with Simon he might have seen—he might have heard—Oh, Lord, what a joke! What a sick-making, ridiculous joke.”

  Cece was laughing now, horrible, high peals of laughter that made her double over, clutching at her stomach with the force of it, tears making the eye-black run down her cheeks.

  “How we roared. Peter said—Peter said—”

  A horrible choking sound emerged from Cece’s throat. It took Rachel a moment to realize that she was crying. Not prettily. Not crystalline tears, but great ugly, gulping sobs.

  “Cece…” It was Simon who reached for her this time, but he was too late.

  Cece whirled away, her fingers like claws, clutching at Rachel’s shoulders. “Tell me! You said you could. You said you could read the cards—”

  Behind her, as in a dream, Rachel could see John Trevannion and Lady Olivia. Lady Olivia had taken a step back, gloved fingers pressed against her lips.

  Cece shook Rachel until Rachel’s tawdry hoop earrings clattered and her brain felt as though it were rattling between her ears. “Tell me. Tell me why—”

  “Cece! Cece, I can’t, really. I don’t—” Rachel was grasping for Cece’s wrists, trying to wriggle free of her grasp, but the other woman was strong, surprisingly strong.

  “Tell me, tell me, tell me…” The words came out in a hysterical mantra, in time to the rattling of Rachel’s teeth. “You said you could.… Tell me, tell me, tell me…”

  Tears poured down Cece’s cheeks in rivers of black kohl, dripping unheeded onto the precious stuff of her dress.

  And then, suddenly, the pressure was gone. Gently, but firmly, Simon pulled her away. “That’s enough, Cece.”

  “Enough?” Cece’s lips drew back over her teeth. She was laughing again, high and hysterical. “Enough? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like to make it all just go away. As if you didn’t—as if he wouldn’t—”

  Behind her, Rachel could hear John Trevannion saying, “She’s hysterical. The poor girl’s hysterical.” And then, in a louder voice, “Too many drinks. Brandy on top of gin…”

  Wildly, Cece turned from Olivia to Simon, from Simon to Olivia. Her voice sliced through the room, over the faltering scrapings of the violin.

  “It’s your fault! It’s your fault, do you hear!”

  Simon took a step forward. Rachel was reminded of a tiger keeper at the zoo, speaking slowly and carefully. “Cece…”

  “Don’t touch me!” Cece backed away, her jeweled heel catching on the trailing velvet table cover.

  Rachel grabbed for her, but it was too late, Cece was already falling, falling, landing on the wooden floor with a hard, unromantic thunk.

  For a moment, all was silence. Horrible silence. Cece lay crumpled on the floor, her gold lamé skirts pooling around her like molten gold. Then, from beneath her splayed fingers came the breath of sound, a whimper, a name.

  Belatedly, awkwardly, Rachel scrambled down beside her. The fringe of her shawl caught on the back of the chair. She shrugged it aside. “Cece! Darling? Are you hurt?”

  Cece curled into a ball, her knees tucked to her chest. Her eyes were closed, tears leaking out of the sides. “Peter … Peter…”

  Rachel felt as though she was being turned inside out, left vulnerable and raw. Gone was all the affectation, the bravado she had come to associate with Cece. There was something gut-wrenchingly sad about the noises coming from Cece’s lips, like a child crying alone in the night.

  “Is it your head?” Desperately, Rachel reached behind the other woman’s head, feeling for a lump. Easier to focus on the physical, on the things that needed to be done. No blood, and no lump, not that she could feel. “If I hold up my fingers, can you tell me how many there are?”

  Somewhere above her, she could hear John Trevannion’s voice, saying with false heartiness, “… had a bit too much, you know how it is. Mixing punch with gin … quite a head in the morning.”

  And the shrill, starling chatter of the gossips as the word eddied and spread, transmuted into something new and fantastical with each iteration.

  “… darling, didn’t you know!” Rachel could hear someone saying, behind her. “They say it’s Elmley’s.”

  “I thought he was”—whisper, whisper, giggle, giggle—“with Barbara.”

  “Not for centuries! Besides, just look at her—”

  “Let me.” Moving Rachel aside, Simon knelt by Cece.

  “S-Simon?” Cece’s voice broke on a sob.

  “Right here.” He held out his arms to her, and Cece burrowed her face into his chest, eye-black smearing across the white of his shirt. Simon’s eyes met Rachel’s above Cece’s head. In a low voice, he said, “I’m taking her home.”

  Carefully, he stood. The others had backed away, disassociating themselves from the spectacle. John Trevannion had escorted Lady Olivia a discreet distance away. Cece was still weeping, but softly now, the sound muffled by Simon’s chest, her slippered feet dangling over his arm, the jeweled heels somehow absurd now, strangely out of place in the face of her dejection.

  Their costumes suddenly seemed like the tawdry things they were, nothing but cheap glitter and paste.

  Rachel rose creakily to her feet. She felt a hundred years old. “I’ll help.”

  “There’s no need.” Simon’s voice was abrupt, clipped. “You’ve done enough.”

  Rachel took a step back, the color high in her cheeks. That wasn’t fair. If she’d known—She kept her voice low to keep the others from hearing. In a furious whisper, she said, “You might have warned me!”

  Simon pressed his eyes shut. Beneath the gaily colored turban, his skin looked sallow; there were dark circles beneath his eyes. “Look, that was—I’m sorry.”

  She had never expected an apology. Rachel stared at him, caught off guard.

  Cradling Cece in his arms, Simon mustered an unconvincing smile. “You have your own cats to flay. Remember?”

  She couldn’t leave them there like that. Rachel smoothed a bit of fair hair, fine as a child’s, away from Cece’s brow, her eyes on Simon’s. “Are you sure? I—”

  “She has her mother.” And then, as Rachel stood there, in an agony of indecision. “It’s all right.”

  The gossiping strangers parted, watching, as Simon moved toward the stair, his limp burden in his arms.

  “Simon!” He turned back, just for a moment. “Who is Peter?”

  “No one,” he said, and turned and walked away, the crowd parting as he passed, the jewels on Cece’s heels winking and glittering.

  And Rachel was left standing there, beside the trailing velvet of the scrying table, with a sick taste at the back of her throat that had nothing to do with the contents of Tommy Digby’s flask.

  Peter, Cece had cried. Peter.

  There were Peters in their set, Peters Rachel had met, but none for whom she could imagine Cece, polished, laughing, brittle Cece, reduced to a hysterical, biting, clawing, mass of misery.

  Tell me … Tell me … Tell me why …

  The to
uch of a hand on Rachel’s bare shoulder made her jump.

  She whirled, her fist pressed against her lips, to find only John Trevannion. “That was … unfortunate,” he said.

  Rachel reached for her shawl, but it had been dropped somewhere during the fray, undoubtedly sopping up the dregs of Cece’s fallen drink. She wrapped her arms around herself, shoulders hunched.

  “If I had known … I hadn’t imagined. Oh, God.” She looked down at her own red chiffon skirts, the cards scattered across the floor. “It was meant to be a game.”

  A game with a sting in it. But the sting had never been intended for Cece.

  Ought she have known? Ought she have noticed that there was something abnormal about the force of Cece’s interest?

  Simon had known. And so had Lady Olivia. Both of them, watching Cece, worried.

  John gave her bare shoulder a brief, reassuring squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Cece’s voice, hysterical. It’s your fault. It’s your fault.

  There was a small diadem in Lady Olivia’s dark blond hair, a tasteful thing, without sparkle. Beneath it, Lady Olivia’s face was pale and still.

  “We—we really ought to be going,” she said. She held out a hand to Rachel. “It was very kind of you to invite us.”

  The amenities must be observed. The Titanic was sinking but the band was still playing. An earl’s daughter was bred to such behavior. Were there lessons on how to comport oneself after a fortune-telling fit of hysteria?

  “It was Cece’s party as much as mine.” Rachel felt numb, numb and frozen, as though she were moving slowly through a wasteland.

  Cece draped over Simon’s arm. It’s your fault. Peter … The horrible, guttural sounds coming from Cece’s throat, pain and loss too terrible to contemplate. Tell me …

  Stooping, Rachel retrieved her sodden shawl. “I—I think I ought to go, too. I couldn’t stay. Not after—” Oh, Lord, she didn’t want to do this, not now. But if not, what was the point of it all? “Would you mind terribly if I share your taxi?”

  “Not at all.” It was John Trevannion who spoke, holding out an arm to her. “Can we drop you at your flat?”